What I love is that in the paper here they had the Telus guy talking about the problem is all the people downloading movies and music that use a lot of bandwidth…

So… charge them for the bandwidth!

Right now they charge for access speed, with a lump of data included. And which as far as I can tell they never really check on. The only time they notice is when someone starts using a spam server or otherwise moving massive amounts of data.

What it really seems to boil down to is that the ISP’s can’t seem to be bothered to actually monitor bandwidth used and charge accordingly. Some bright light marketing guy decided that rather than spend a reasonable amount to put in place the structure to bill by the KB, it would be better to spend 3 times as much money branding the product as a luxury / special item as you said. After all, look what we pay for bottled water vs tap water. I don’t mind paying for what I use, but like you, I view internet access as a utility, like gas, electricity, water … though not as necessary 🙂